Abstract

This research investigates the influence of knowledge characteristics on the process of knowledge transfer within strategic alliances in Indonesia. Knowledge characteristics such as tacitness, specificity, complexity, experience, partner protectiveness, cultural distance and organizational distance, are hypothesized to have influence on the process of knowledge transfer, in which ambiguity acts as mediating variable. Adopting the model of Simonin (1999), 95 respondents were taken as the sample of this research. While the findings corroborate those of Simonin’s, we found that expertise to collaborate, capacity to learn, and the level of trust, did not change the influence of ambiguity on knowledge transfer. However, the length of alliance relationship matters, as it reduces the level of ambiguity.